President Obama greets audience members after an economic speech Dec. 6 in Osawatomie, Kan. Since October, he has trumpeted 18 of his solo initiatives.

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The clampdown on bipartisan talks and uptick in partisan swipes at his opponents in Congress follows a disastrous series of negotiations in the spring and summer that narrowly avoided a government shutdown and a national default, diminishing the country's credit rating and its elected leaders' poll ratings.

Since then, Obama has purposefully altered his reputation for insisting on compromise — a trait that generated criticism from his base during an August bus tour of rural America. Instead, he has followed through on a threat he made to House Republican leader Eric Cantor in July to take his case "to the American people."

Since late September, he has sat for White House interviews with 20 local television stations from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore. Those have complemented his speeches around the country, about three-fourths of them in states considered crucial to his re-election.

Since late October, he has trumpeted 18 initiatives as part of a "We Can't Wait" campaign, designed to highlight executive actions Obama takes without Congress' involvement.

For a candidate who campaigned against Washington's petty politics and a president who tried to work with Republicans for most of his term, the change has been striking.

A year ago, he singled out Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell at a White House ceremony for his help in passing a payroll tax cut for 155 million Americans. Since the July debt-limit talks, he has spoken to McConnell once — by telephone.

Former lawmakers can't recall a time when a president and congressional leaders from the other party refused to work together for so long.

"It's an abdication of leadership on his part," says former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott. "You don't get to check out when you're president … whether you feel like you've been dealt with appropriately or not."

"In all the administrations I'm aware of, there's been tremendous communication and meetings, and ultimately cooperation," says former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt. "The Republicans are just locked in. They don't want to agree. They don't want to negotiate."

The seeds were planted for bad blood between Obama and GOP leaders 14 months ago, when McConnell told an interviewer that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." The comment has been recalled often by the White House as evidence the GOP can't be trusted.

After the debt-limit talks failed to yield the "grand bargain" sought by Obama and House Speaker John Boehner to cut $4 trillion from future budget deficits, Obama chose a new, public strategy. GOP leaders, he reasoned, would continue to oppose him at every turn and couldn't speak for their more conservative members anyway.

"The conclusion he drew after the summer … is to aggressively enlist the American people in these discussions," says David Axelrod, the campaign's chief strategist. "And I think that was the right thing to do."

Unable to advance his legislative priorities, the president instead has rallied his supporters — most often in states such as Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and Colorado, all up for grabs in next year's election. Top White House and campaign officials contend it's worked on two fronts: advancing policy goals and improving poll ratings.

Progress toward reaching his goals, however, has been incremental. Obama's jobs package and payroll tax cut — even his nominee to head a consumer watchdog agency — have been blocked by Senate Republicans. Only a small portion of his $447 billion American Jobs Act got through Congress; the payroll tax and jobless aid remain mired in discord.

And polls have barely budged. Obama's job approval in Gallup's daily tracking poll was 41% in early August and is 42% now, with a high of 45% in between.

Since the summer, Obama and Boehner — onetime golf buddies — have spoken only briefly by phone. "We are very different people, have very different beliefs about what the appropriate role of the federal government is," Boehner said earlier this week. "But we get along very well."

Less so Obama and McConnell. "The president does not seem to be happy these days unless he has an issue over which to divide us," the Senate GOP leader said earlier this week. "If the Republicans are proposing it, he is against it. … He is not even trying to hide it."

Presidents and opposition leaders in Congress have fought before. Franklin Roosevelt went around Congress in 1940 to build support for the United States entering World War II. Harry Truman ran against a "do-nothing" Congress in 1948, winning in an upset despite poll ratings as low as Obama's. Bill Clinton fumed over Republicans' budget tactics in 1995 and his impeachment in 1998.

More often, however, the two sides have broken bread and brokered deals. Republican Dwight Eisenhower huddled with Democrats Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn in the family quarters at night. As president, Johnson met with Republican senator Everett Dirksen over cocktails.

Ronald Reagan met with congressional leaders at 9 a.m. every Tuesday, though Democrats weren't invited every time. Clinton kept the phone lines open to Lott mornings and evenings. After 9/11, George W. Bush hosted weekly breakfast meetings with bipartisan leaders.

Alan Simpson, the Senate's assistant GOP leader during parts of the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, can't recall a time when leaders barely communicated.

"Not once was there ever a gap like that. It didn't matter who was in power," says Simpson, who co-chaired Obama's deficit reduction commission last year. "You can't run a railroad that way. You can't run a glorious country that way."

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